Essays in the economics of education

This thesis consists of three chapters that study how characteristics of peers and schools affect human capital. The first chapter reports estimates of academic and social peer effects from a large-scale field experiment at selective boarding schools in Peru. The experimental design overcomes some methodological challenges in the peer effects literature. I randomly varied the characteristics of neighbors in dormitories with two treatments: (a) less or more sociable peers (identified by their position in the school's friendship network before the intervention) and (b) lower- or higher-achieving peers (identified by admission test scores). While more sociable peers enhance the formation of social skills, higher-achieving peers do not improve academic achievement; in fact, they further reduce the academic performance of lower-achieving students. These results appear to be driven by students' self-confidence.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Authors dc:creator

• Zárate, Román Andrés(Zárate Vasquez)
• Angrist, Joshua David,
• Pathak, Parag A.,

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Esther Duflo and Parag Pathak.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122118

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122118